Developing economies last year recorded their slowest growth since the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and are facing the prospect of an equally grim 2016, the World Bank has warned. Releasing its latest forecasts on Wednesday, the World Bank said it expected the global economy would grow 2.9 per cent this year, up slightly from 2.4 per cent in 2015. But that predicted bump depended on advanced economies such as the US and EU accelerating, it said, with developing economies ranging from China to commodity-dependent nations in Africa and Latin America facing an increasingly fragile outlook. Developing economies as a group grew at a rate of 4.3 per cent in 2015, the slowest pace since 2009, and the bank predicted they would grow 4.8 per cent this year. But 2016 was already shaping up to be “risky” and the forecast for this year “comes with the realisation that there are faultlines below the surface”, said Kaushik Basu, the World Bank’s chief economist.